The Sex Pistols show at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4, 1976, has become known as the gig that changed the world.

Then a little known London group, making early waves in the capital, the Sex Pistols were spotted by emerging Manchester punk outfit The Buzzcocks and booked to play a gig up north (the hall apparently cost £32 for the night).

Tickets cost 50p, and the gig was advertised in the small ads at the back of the Manchester Evening News. It was a sit down show, in a very formal hall with a high stage that usually housed the Halle Orchestra, and local rock band Solstice played a 20 minute version of Mountain's Nantucket Sleighride to kick the night off.

Over the years, thousands have claimed to be in the 150 capacity hall but the number was more like 42. One person who absolutely was there was Peter Hook, with his mate Bernard Sumner - two people who would go on to create ground breaking bands and change perceptions about Manchester and its music.

"It's my 40th anniversary, too," remembers Hooky, "because I walked out of that gig as a musician. I came home with a guitar and told my dad, 'I'm a punk musician now', and my father said, 'You won't last a week'. Here I am 40 years later.

"Ever since a young age I've been an avid reader of the music papers and my escape during work was reading them. I was reading about all these heavy metal bands, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but I never felt inspired by it - it seemed so untouchable.

"I kept reading snippets about this group called Sex Pistols and all they seemed to do was fight at their gigs. I saw the advert in the MEN and said to Barney, 'We've got to go and see this band, they do nothing but fight'. There was a lot of football violence then, it felt like the working class world I was used to as a lad from Ordsall and Salford."

Peter Hook (Image: Al De Perez)

Strangely, the gig isn't one that Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten, aka John Lydon, recalls the details of that well. But he does remember that "if we were going to play outside London, Manchester had to be the place," he told the MEN.

"They say everyone who was at those gigs went out and formed a band, but that wasn't our plan - or our fault!"

It wasn't just bands either. Celebrated photographer Kevin Cummins was there, then a photography student at Salford, as was writer and journalist Paul Morley. Facts remain vague on whether Anthony H Wilson was really at the second show six weeks later, but certainly the Granada TV broadcaster - who would go on to mastermind Factory Records and co-found The Hacienda nightclub - saw the Pistols at the venue at some point.

The Smiths

(Image: Mirrorpix)

Steven Patrick Morrissey was at the gig and, six years later, would go on to form The Smiths with Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce.

The band remain one of the most acclaimed groups to emerge from Manchester, particularly for their 1986 album The Queen Is Dead - a record still hailed as one of the greatest British albums of all time.

Magazine

The musical ambitions of Howard Devoto (second from right) and Pete Shelley were already well underway when, as The Buzzcocks, they organised this gig. But the following year, Devoto quit and formed Magazine, leaving the conventions of three chord punk rock for a new wave sound.

It was a collaboration with Shelley though on Magazine's debut album, Real Life, that would become their signature tune: Shot By Both Sides. And strangely, years later, Devoto Magazine bandmate John McGeoch would go on to join Public Image Ltd - John Lydon's post-Pistols group.

Joy Division

(Image: Martin O'Neill)

Bernard Sumner and his wife Sue arrived on their motorbike to meet pals Peter Hook and Terry Mason (Joy Division's future roadie) at the show. All of them felt the same way after it; they hadn't met Ian Curtis or drummer Stephen Morris at that point, but they knew the kind of band they wanted to form.

Says Peter: "The Sex Pistols came on, John Lydon told us all to **** off, it sounded awful, their attitude was like they were messing about on stage, they seemed to be taking it not very seriously - laughing at us. I literally thought,' I could do that'.

"For a lot of people it demystified music and brought it down to our level. The energy of it was so genuine; punk was very genuine. Bands were forming and playing a gig the next day with no songs, buying instruments and making a racket. It was like being a child in Toys R Us."

Joy Division released only one album, Unknown Pleasures, before Ian's tragic suicide in 1980 on the eve of the release of follow up Closer and their first US tour.

The Fall

(Image: Joel Goodman)

Salford and Prestwich lad Mark E Smith was already making music when the Pistols played this show, forming The Fall in 1976 after leaving college at just 19.

They'd play their first show a year later, and since then have gone on to release around 30 studio albums and produce a similar number of former members! Smith remains one of the last true mavericks of Manchester music, a prolific songwriter who is constantly pushing the boundaries of punk rock.